Cowboys have “very educational” meeting with MADD

Two high-profile drunk driving cases in the last two months have the Dallas Cowboys seeking assistance from Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Cowboys Executive V.P. Stephen Jones said team officials had “very educational” meetings with MADD recently. Cowboys defensive tackle Josh Brent was charged with intoxication manslaughter in the death of his teammate Jerry Brown in December, and Cowboys defensive tackle Jay Ratliff was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in January, and Jones acknowledged that that’s unacceptable.

“At the end of the day we’re all accountable for our actions,” Jones told the Dallas Morning News. “We certainly have to get better as an organization. We all have to get better in terms of our decision-making and our community obviously. The Cowboys, our players, our coaches, our executives are held to high standards and people look up to that. There’s no excuses. We have to get better. We are going to continue to look for ways to get better as an organization in terms of what we do. Obviously, it’s not good enough and until we get to a point that there are zero incidents then we’re not going to rest and we’re not going to be satisfied. We’ll just move forward like that.”

Jones is obviously right when he says the Cowboys have to get better as an organization. But if seeing one teammate killed and another teammate jailed wasn’t enough to scare Ratliff straight, there may be nothing MADD or any other organization can do to keep some players from driving drunk.

Sadly, I don’t think drunk driving will ever disappear. That doesn’t mean we should not try to reduce it to a minimum.

I’ve done it in the past, but since then I’ve tried to be honest with myself and realize that it is much better to shell out some extra bucks on a cab than to put people around me in danger.. Thankfully, I never harmed others or myself when I did it. But it is one of the most stupid things one can do, because it is so dangerous and at the time so easy to prevent.

As public figures, athletes have some kind of extra responsibility to avoid it and set an example. But really, it’s something that falls on each and everyone of us.

zeeman911 says:Feb 13, 2013 9:59 PM

These bros just think its party time. Smoking a bunch of blunts doesn’t help either….

mazblast says:Feb 13, 2013 10:10 PM

What “education” do people need? How freaking obvious does something have to be before you “learn” it?

Either the Cowboys organization has descended to the IQ level of the falsely stereotyped Texan (not everyone in Texas has the IQ of a small soap dish, only a great many), or they’re trying to placate the rabid dogs of MADD, or both.

revskip says:Feb 13, 2013 11:28 PM

If the Cowboys were serious about stopping their players and coaches from driving drunk they would mandate immediate yearlong suspensions for any infraction for conduct detrimental to the team. They have that leverage available to them under the CBA but would never use it because at the end of the day they feel competing is more important than the lives that are put in danger each time one of their players or coaches gets behind the wheel of a car drunk. Which is why instead of immediately banning Josh Brent from team facilities they allowed him to hang out on the sidelines at the game immediately after killing one of his teammates with his selfish and dangerously irresponsible behavior.

CKL says:Feb 14, 2013 9:46 AM

Organizations can’t do anything. The law can. Change it so that after your second convicion of DUI only (ie not DUI manslaughter) the vehicle you were driving (unless you stole it)is taken away, sold at auction and money goes to some deserving charity. If it were someone else’s car you legally borrowed, well, they just learned not to lend their car to a drunk driver. I would hope that anyone who knew someone well enough to lend them their car would know they had a DUI on their record. And if not, again, expensive lesson learned.

Education on what should be common sense can’t fix stupid or simply irresponsible. Look at all the sex ed we have now and the easy availability of birth control, then look at the amount of baby mommas and daddies we have now vs what there was 60 years ago with little sex ed and birth control availability. All you can do is make people’s awful decisions have grave consequences so they are sufficiently discouraged from repeating those choices.